"Caps! Caps for sale! Fifty cents a cap!"
I can remember reading this book as a child and finding it so cute. It was not until I was preparing my lessons for my own daughter to go with this book that I realized it has many additional sequels. These of course became "go along books," and we actually had a LOT of go a long books. I'll get into those and explain them later. Make sure though, you get ALL these precious Pezzo the Peddler books.
We noticed that the monkeys did whatever Pezzo did. They copied him. Monkey see, monkey do. We discussed how our actions can be influential whether good or bad, on others. When Pezzo acts angry, the monkeys copy this, in the sequels, when Pezzo helps a friend, the monkeys help their friend. After this discussion, we played the game Monkey see, Monkey do, where Ellie first copied all the moves or things I did. Then she got her turn to lead and it was really a fun time and also super great exercise. She loved this and when her daddy came home from work, she lead him in the game before going to bed. Hilarious family bonding time!
We also sang the song, "5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed." We acted it out, a lot of up and down, falling down, and my what good exercise! Play like a toddler and you'll always be in shape, haha!
We also studied monkeys, primates, and where they are native to, what kinds, etc. We looked at a map and with some thumbnail size print outs of monkey which I laminated and cut out, we placed them on the map. So, we knew there were some native to Africa, Asia, Central America, and South America. Therefore, Ellie was to find each continent and place the monkey on the appropriate continent. I was impressed how quickly she picked up on this and how much she enjoyed it. I think it was interesting to her. She liked knowing where she lived, she said Central America looked like "an Ellie leg," ...ok...?? Haha, whatever helps her to remember and have fun with it is really all that matters. She asked me to take her to Central America one day as well which I thought was really cool. So the Geography game was great. She got a lot more out of it than I anticipated for a 3 year old. Again, I think because it wasn't like school, it was playing and just exploring this big beautiful map of our world!
My grandmother contributed to this row by giving us a ton of old hats of hers which we used in a couple of different ways for STEM play.
1.) Stacking hats/ balancing/ counting: We wanted to be like Pezzo. We wanted to carry our wares on the top of our heads. Ellie went first. She had to try to stay very still, Be straight. Be slow. We stacked the hats on her head. She was able to balance 10 before they collapsed. They actually got quite heavy. She found their toppling hilarious. Then, Ellie stacked them upon my head. We got 11 on my head, they were leaning awfully, but they were up there! This was a lot of fun!
2.) We counted how many hats we had.
3.) We sorted by hat type, straw, cotton.
4.) We sorted and counted by color. How many of each color do we have? Color grouping.
We always love to get in the kitchen when rowing a story. I think so much can be taught in the kitchen, math, life skills, chemistry, confidence, independence, and awesome hands on skills. So for this book we made Monkey Pancakes! Here is a recipe and explanation of what they are. So so yummy!! I could go for some right now as I type this! Here are some photos.
For a snack, I borrowed an idea from another post on Pinterest where we melted chocolate and dipped bananas in them. I actually have a fondue station so I just used the mini crockpot from it to melt the chocolate, and we dipped the bananas, let the chocolate harden, and Ellie enjoyed these for snack along with a moustache on a straw as she drank her milk so she could look like Pezzo! This was fun and just super cute.
Some other activities were to use a Barrel of Monkeys for balance and building on a little brass jewelry tree. Another idea found on Pinterest. I found the tree on Amazon. The monkeys climbed the tree and Ellie enjoyed switching them around, balancing them, and hooking them in different ways.
Another idea from this same Pinterest post was to purchase a Playmobil Pirate set and counting manipulatives. This game activity was awesome math time. The counting manipulatives happen to perfectly fit on the Playmobil Pirate's head. So we were able to stack them like our peddler. We first paid attention to the pattern in the book, how Pezzo stacked his. We copied that. We counted how many of each color cap was used. Then, Ellie had free range to try and stack as many caps of any color she wanted on the pirate's head. We counted them and she found it really exhilarating to see how many we could get total. She would almost holler to me, "Count Mommy! Let's count!" We counted up to as many as 35 caps stacked before collapsing. This so tickled her. Then she wanted to build towers and a community...a city...of towers and she wanted to keep counting. I never force counting or "school type" work because I don't want to burn her out. Learning has to be fun and playful especially at age 3. So when she desires to count, I jump on it! She will have plenty of math in her future that is unpleasant, but no need to force it on her and make her hate it. This was a really great game to make her excited to count!
She played that a while and after some time I decided to read to her while she kept stacking and creating. She loves to do a project, build, paint, color, and let me read to her while she works. She really learns well this way. She doesn't have to have her eyes glued to a page to learn and that is so great. I'm not like that! So I read our go along books:
I chose the Pancake books because of course we made monkey pancakes so I thought what a great little side addition. the map book was to emphasize the geography play we did, and "The Great Kapok Tree" rainforest book was obviously to see the environment a lot of primates live in and the book illustrated several different primates on its pages. A great little addition. We read all the "5 Little Monkeys" books and a lot of Curious George which just further showed the curiosity and mischievous monkey personality seen in "Caps for Sale." I didn't have a book about the differences in monkeys specifically but we researched it and discussed it as part of the geography study. Ideally I would love to have added a book on the varieties of species of primates and their regions, etc. We also read, "Uncle Nacho's Hat," which I really liked as it was also about a man and his hat. And Uncle Nacho just so happens to have a monkey on his shoulder. Bonus. It tied in well.
We also took a trip to our local Zoo (we are so blessed to have one near) and specifically went to see the varieties of primates. Of course we enjoyed the entire zoo!
We also wanted to sew caps like Pezzo who has to work hard to make his own wares every night after selling them. He is a diligent worker and has a great skill. We used felt, yarn, and a plastic threading needle. I hole punched the felt first. then Ellie threaded her needle and sewed her felt, loop for loop. She loves hands on activities like this. We are Charlotte Mason style homeschoolers as well so these handi-crafts are something we value.
I hope these offer some great ideas for your row of this precious story!
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